Character Biographies

[adgohan]

Interesting addition.

When a character dies - are these stored for the immortals?

If so, this may eliminate the need for wiki entries or character story submissions, in time.

[amoeba]

Thank you very much.

I'm looking forward to doing my part to filling the hard disk quickly.  (In a good way)

[bloodfromstone]

Very awesome. It would be nice to have a Read Biography option for dead characters added. (if it hasn't been)

EDIT: It would also be great to get a final prompt (if you have any biography entries, so those who don't want to use them don't have to get bothered) upon death to write a last entry detailing the character's fall.

[Anonymous]

Yes, having the option to make a final entry upon death would be cool.

Could this be done by adding the biography command to the character command options that appear after connecting to your account but before entering Arm? That would have the added advantage of being able to update your biography in guaranteed peace.

[Raesanos]

Can mindbenders read them?

Like Moe said, people shouldn't be discussing the specific powers of different guilds outside what the documentation explicitly tells you.

[Oxidised Lizard]

I don't think we should know if mindbenders can read them but it would be very cool if they could.  :twisted:

[bloodfromstone]

There's something that just seems to work better about writing a character's biography in first person. You think anyone would kill me if my background/biography were inconsistant?

[Halaster]

There's something that just seems to work better about writing a character's biography in first person. You think anyone would kill me if my background/biography were inconsistant?

Keep in mind, though, that most people on Zalanthas are not literate, so don't take this as an ACTUAL biography.  It's not a diary, but rather a story about the character.  Look at it as an extended, appendable background.  There may even be stuff in there your character doesn't know.

The main points (but not necessarily exclusive) of this are to:

1.  make an ongoing story available for the Staff so we can better understand your character
2.  make an ongoing story available to you, so you can go back and read it and enjoy the memories

[bloodfromstone]

Fair enough. It seems weird to write events as they happen in 3rd person, but that is probably because I'm thinking of the diary feeling to the biography, and, if I did write one in 1st person, that's how it would come across. 3rd person it is. Thanks, Halaster.

[Moofassa]

Neato... Another thing to fill in...Sounds cool, can help me remember things too.


What would the staff position be on someone who doesn't fill in their biography. (not that I wouldnt)

[Halaster]

Neato... Another thing to fill in...Sounds cool, can help me remember things too.


What would the staff position be on someone who doesn't fill in their biography. (not that I wouldnt)

It is not required information, so if you choose not to use it, that's fine.

[Lazloth]

2.  make an ongoing story available to you, so you can go back and read it and enjoy the memories

Does this information stay visible to the player once the character dies?  (eg., via account menu or some mechanism)

[Tiernan]

Does this information stay visible to the player once the character dies?  (eg., via account menu or some mechanism)

There's an ongoing effort to revamp the website and the way I've implemented biographies should allow for easy accessibility to revisit the biographies of your previous characters.  I didn't plan on building something into the server's menu system to provide access as I anticipate that once there's access via the website there won't be much, if any, use from the server menu.  As for when the new website will go online, I don't have an estimate right now.

[Tiernan]

Is there any maximum character or paragragh length for individual biography entries?

It's big.  Really big.  You won't believe how mind-boggling big it really is.  The server will tell you how many characters max you have when you start the editor, but if I recall it's in the realm of 16k characters.

[Tamarin]

Oh ok.  I figured it was the lengths of the entries that was causing all the crashes.

Je suis wrong.  Je apologizé(e).

[Tiernan]

Oh ok.  I figured it was the lengths of the entries that was causing all the crashes.

No, it was an XML character encoding/decoding issue which I resolved on Sunday.  We just haven't had any reboots since then to incorporate the changes.

[jmordetsky]

Sweet.

[Tamarin]

Are biographies ok now?  Can we use them?  It won't crash the mud over and over?

[Nusku]

Looks like.

[Bogre]

Okay, for those of us who might be playing long lived characters, and for whom the prospect of making a biography is daunting, I'm hoping its okay if the catching up process is a slow one. I know writing a biography for my current char will be a chore, (though I always like reminescing about my char), and just think of those characters who are really old.

[Medena]

If it's going to be a chore, just don't do it.  I don't know about you but I try to spend my non-work time in enjoyable pursuits (except of course for having to clean the toilet, wash dishes & other blecchy stuff that I have to perform just because I'm a grownup).

It is not required information, so if you choose not to use it, that's fine.

[marko]

My char hasn't been that long lived and thus far it's taken three hours putting together a biography and it hasn't caught up to everything that has happened.  I suppose one can say my char is living an eventful life.

The point?  I don't think I have one.  Oh right, I do.

This command is wonderful.  I think it will really help immortals understand the progression and history of a character and help players to maintain that and chart their own experiences.

[LauraMars]

What if you have a dead character and their life was really cool and you wanted to write a biography for them?  Can you send that to the staff for them to put in your files, or are you stuck with just reading the textfile all by your lonesome forever?

[flurry]

What if you have a dead character and their life was really cool and you wanted to write a biography for them?  Can you send that to the staff for them to put in your files, or are you stuck with just reading the textfile all by your lonesome forever?

There's this, but maybe you already know about that.

[Rindan]

Maybe I am miss interpreting this point of the biography command, but I don't think the point is to spend hours detailing everything that has happened in your life time.  I think it is more to just hit the major talking points.  I don't think you have to write your life's story in painful detail.  If anything, I imagine a little brevity is probably preferred.  

I know that if I was an imm who was about to interact with a character or noticed a character getting involved with a plot I might hit up their background.  If when I went to read their background I got 10 pages of spam I would probably not read it.  On the other hand, if it had just a few to the point entries in addition to the normal background, I would likely read it start to finish.

I suppose it depends upon your purpose in doing a biography.  If your point is to archive your character's life story for prosperities sake, you might get zealous and record with greater detail.  If your point is to give imms better insight into your character, I imagine brevity is best.